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Twenty-five years of composing music, writing books, creating Bible study material and garnering awards haven't given Michael Card immunity from sorrow. After he watched his 18-year-old nephew and two infant nieces die, Card embarked on a journey to learn how grief brings us closer to God. His new album, The Hidden Face of God, follows his book, A Sacred Sorrow. Card shared with us about why both projects are devoted to the topic of grief, about the church in America and about true worship.

You've written a book and an album about sorrow. What was your inspiration for all this lamenting?

Michael Card My brother's oldest son died in 1999. My sister lost two infants four or five years before that. My mother lost a child before I was born. That has always been simmering on the back burner of my mind. What made me finally think about it, act on it, and write about it was 9/11. It was a wake-up call. The book, A Sacred Sorrow, came out of those experiences. The new record came out of my work on the book.

On your new album, The Hidden Face of God, the song, "How Long?" talks about God hiding his presence from us. Did you feel that way?

Card When my nephew died, it was a long, drawn-out cancer, and I was thinking more about trying to support my brother. When my sister lost her first child, the child was blind, had an open spine and many other birth defects. The child died after two months. I could see the sense in that. When my sister lost her second child 13 months later, it really affected me. The child died at two months old of a ruptured appendix. In many ways, our family fragmented and never recovered from that. My sister and her husband divorced and my brother and his wife split up. It was devastating for our family. That was when I had the big struggle and questions. And I shook my fist at God.

Why is it so tough when God seems to be indifferent to our suffering?

Card God has revealed himself to us as a loving God, the person who gives us everything. When something happens that is so inconsistent with that, it's a problem. When he seems to be silent, it makes it even worse. There's a great book calling Naming the Silences by Stanley Hauer was about how God uses silence when we are suffering. God is most intent on giving us himself, not giving us things. At the end of the book of Job, he doesn't get his things back. Job gets God back. It's a whole reorientation in our relationship with God to see him not as a provider who gives us things, but to see him as intent on giving himself to us.

How has this knowledge changed you?

Card People come up to me and share about things that have happened to them. The impulse is always to try to fix things, but I don't talk at people anymore. I'm now able to enter into their pain and cry with them.

Job's friends blamed him for his suffering. Christians often tend to do the same thing to other Christians. Why is that?

Card Other people's suffering is threatening to people because it goes against their formula where if you're good, God blesses you, and if you're bad, God punishes you. When people see others suffering, they can't understand it. They come up with easy answers because they feel threatened that it could happen to them. My sister and brother had people telling them if they just had enough faith, their children wouldn't have died.

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